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Comment by namanyayg | Hacker News Reader

This is quite genius.

A great example of cybercrime tools being used for good

Reminds me of how Russian malware never runs if it detects the PC having Russian as the default language

I wouldnt call it good. This is criminals stealing from other criminals, which is still crime. Just as how gangland wars can impact innocent bystanders, these nested layers of illegality and theft of information can cause harm to others.

how often does somebody get prosecuted for stealing from another criminal?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_Unit...

https://www.aclu.org/issues/criminal-law-reform/reforming-po...

Not often enough, apparently. Not always "criminals". Just suspects...

How many crimes does one have to commit before they "are a criminal"? If someone broke a law, but the law was later amended so the act is now legal, are they still a criminal? (E.g. cannabis)

Yes. A town raising a speed limit on a road doesn't mean everyone who ever got a ticket previous to the change wasn't speeding. That's why it takes special laws and acts by executive authorities to take retroactive action, if the deem doing so a good idea.

So it's good to steal from anyone who has ever exceeded the speed limit, filthy criminals that they are?

If they were also using software to steal from someone then I would guess that their inertial moment would serve as neither a defense nor detriment to their case.

This is a cute rhetorical trick, but if you can’t see that some people are criminals and some are not, then you are blind.

People do get killed quite often in cases of mistaken identity. Not by the police, usually, but criminal gang wars are not without innocent victims.

Criminals do get charged with theft from other criminals. The only benefit to stealing from criminals is that they won't go to the police, but that doesn't mean they won't report you once they get caught. They may even get out if jail earlier by coming clean and listing every criminal they've interacted with.

Possession of stolen goods. Possession of cocaine. It doesn't matter where you got it. Criminals also still have property rights. Stealing a car from Bernie Madoff is still stealing a car.

In my experience, this sort of attack will affect non-criminals too - the vast majority of people who will fall for this sort of thing are young people using a family computer or the like.

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